


Wretched and Divine

by Resri



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Daud's vineyard, Gen, Human Outsider (Dishonored), Human Sacrifice, POV Outsider, The Void, Whales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-16 02:12:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18511810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resri/pseuds/Resri
Summary: "Whales are wise. Do not anger them."An advice given to a seven year old. Time passes, runs out, stops mattering altogether, but those  words stay when nothing else does.





	1. A boy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thegrumblingirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/gifts).



> Asked for a prompt, got this:  
> "Whales are wise. Do not anger them."
> 
> This is for my beautiful prompter <3
> 
> It was written in one hour, so forgive any mistakes.

"Whales are wise. Do not anger them,” his grandfather had said. It was one of his teachings, from priest to acolyte. The boy remembers it well as he gazes down at the sea, that powerful, endless, roaring beast. The leviathans dive through the depths, and sometimes, on rare days like this one, they break the waves to take a breath close to the cliffs. He loves standing up here on the edge, with nothing before him but empty air and nothing beneath him but the bottomless ocean. Normally, if his mother caught him this far out with his toes peeking over the stone and into the nothing, she would pull him back into the house by his ear, yelling and screaming all the way. The boy has a feeling today she won't. She had been different in the last few weeks, nervous and easily scared. From what he heard the adults talk, there was something wrong with the world. Cracks and phantoms only visible from the corner of your eye, but still there, whispering. He had asked his mother about them, but she had always snapped at him, growing more scared and short tempered by the day, so he had stopped. He doesn't want to worry her more. He wonders, though. The priests were trying to fix it, his friends in the village say, without much success yet.   
Then his grandfather had come visiting this morning, and when she saw him walking up the path from the village, mother had immediately started crying. Grandfather had sat her down gently, had shushed her, and told the boy to go outside for a while. So he had come up here to watch the whales and take a few deep breaths, just like them, in the hopes of getting rid of the tightness around his chest.   
Once, when he'd been only seven, a whale had been stranded on the beach, slowly suffocating under the weight of its own flesh. Grandfather had led him down to the beast's side, had made him touch the thick skin, had made him look into its eye. The boy had stared into a pupil so black and endless, it might as well have been the bottom of the sea. He'd seen the Void in there, and his grandfather had said the words that engraved themselves in his mind.   
Not long after the whale had died, and its carcass was so enormous that it was rotting before the wildlife could clean the bones. 

Only reluctantly the boy looks away from the leviathans below when he hears his grandfather call. He doesn't feel better yet. The walk is short, since his home is just down the path. His mother is still crying, albite quietly now. She immediately goes to hug him, her tears cold on his neck. She's not very tall, so at fifteen he is already a few centimeters taller than her. 

“Why are you crying?” he asks for the second time today, and this time she answers, muffled in his neck and broken, “Because grandfather has a very important task for you, away from home. I will miss you terribly.” 

He says, “I'm scared,” because he has travelled with grandfather to the other villages and never has his mother wept because of it. She peels away from him to touch his face and smile through the tears. Her fingers shake, her smile looks like it hurts.

“Don't be, my dearling,” she says. “You have to be brave.”

The boy tells himself to be brave for her. He is the oldest, the man in the house since his father's death. He has to be strong. He squares his shoulders and tells her not to worry, tells his grandfather he can count on him. He earns himself a squeeze to the shoulder from the old man. “Good boy,” he says, though there is sadness in his voice next to the pride. 

When they leave, the boy looks back to his mother, to his home, to his cliff. He’s not sure why he feels so lost, all of a sudden. It's only a travel with his grandfather, like a dozen times before. They were always very exciting, yet this one feels daunting. He tells himself that he'll be back in a weak or two. Grandfather won't tell him what his task is, but that is not unusual. The ways to become a priest are often mysterious. He will do his duty, save by his grandfather's side like always, and return home a little more knowledgeable, if not wiser. The wisdom, grandfather always says, comes with time. 

But time runs out, just like his lifeblood after his grandfather cut his throat on the cold stone altar in the Void, and the boy becomes a god.


	2. A god

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Void hungers for a god, and eats them up. The cicle repeats, the world is on the brink of ending, and the Outsider is tired.

He is no longer a boy, since four thousand years of existence watching the world and her civilisations break and grow from their ruins has a way of elevating one above things such as age. Over the eons he has forgotten most of his human life. In the grand scheme of things, those fifteen years were not all that special. The memory of a mother and father, of siblings and friends, of cliffs and villages, of his own name has faded. Even the memory of his grandfather is all but gone. The one that ended his mortality is nothing but another hooded figure turned to stone. They had known what their success would do to them. But the Void hungered for a god, and had thrown quite the tantrum, shockwaves rolling into the the sphere of the living like quakes before a volcano's outbreak. Those priests had given more than just a child's life to save the world. Temporarily. 

~

The people of the current age call him the Outsider. It’s as good a name as any. He is no boy, no man, no geriatric. He is bored, mainly. 

People are remarkably dull once a few centuries have passed. He believes they always were, it just took him a while to notice. They fight and procreate and strive for pleasure, in whatever form they might crave it. Only very rarely there is a human being interesting enough to capture his attention. He blesses them with his mark in a language older than himself. The descendents of his people still remember it a little, carve its’ symbols into bone more or less successfully.  
His chosen are few and far between, usually no more than five in one generation. They are scattered all over the world, but when two of them meet, it's usually quite the spectacle. He enjoys it greatly.

~

When another world ending catastrophe nears, the Outsider finds a woman from Pandyssia he nearly marks. She gets taken as a slave on a pirate ship. Soon the captain dies of her poisons, and the first mate gets executed by her order. Within a month of her capture the ship is under her control. She sails the seas free and proud for one year, gives birth to her son about eight months in and attacks an enemy ship only a day later. She has the fire the Outsider seeks and is wrapped up deeply in the net pulling tighter around the world. 

She also decides to settle down and raise her child. 

He visits her in her dreams a few times, and once she reaches Karnaca and prays at a shrine, he comes to her. The surprise on her face when her prayers are answered is delicious. The confirmation that her god actually exists does nothing to sway her, though. 

“I don't want grandness, I want peace,” are her only words to him. Not often does he afford people the choice to decline his mark, but he accepts her wish. She will play an important part in what's to come, either way. After all, she raises her son to burn just as brightly as her. 

~

People start hunting whales. There are many reasons the Outsider doesn't visit Sokolov, foremost among them Sokolov's believe that he can be _summoned_. The one that truly angers him, though, is his part in the advancements of whale oil refinery. Dunwall's industrial revolution is built on whale bone, and soon the peaceful, wise leviathans are close to extinction. 

~

He watches Daud getting stolen from the streets, learning the trade of assassination, surpassing his masters and cutting himself free. He watches him travel. Daud, a boy and a monster, sometimes both and sometimes neither. Daud with Pandyssia in his blood and Serkonos on his skin. The Outsider marks him, partially because he sees all the possibilities of what's to come, partially because Daud is unhinged like his mother was before she settled down. He doesn't want peace, because he forgot what it feels like. 

The Outsider tells him to go to Dunwall, and eventually Daud listens. He makes the city his in the matter of a year. To get some starting capital he lets one Anton Sokolov paint a portrait. The Outsider comes to his dreams that night for the single purpose of laughing at him. Daud, in a first act of defiance maybe, shrugs his shoulders and tells him to fuck off. The Outsider is amused, and ready to watch Daud go his own way. 

The assassin becomes a master, not quite like his masters had been, but not completely unlike them either. He takes on apprentices, shows them the art of murder, and shares his gift. The Outsider knew it was possible. The mark works differently for everyone, and Daud isn't the first who can distribute his power. The Void looks into people’s minds and hearts and manifests through his mark accordingly. Daud, even after all the things done to and by him, and all the years he spent traveling alone afterwards, can't stay by himself. It's a little surprising, since he doesn't trust his people further than he can throw them, but he shares his power easily. A matter of control, the Outsider figures, sitting back and watching things unfold. 

~

Daud kills the Empress and seals his fate. 

~

After looking into the leviathan's eye, ginormous and clouded by weariness and pain, Daud prays in a language he was taught by his mother. He ends up killing it, effectively ending it's suffering. Only a moment later the whale is swimming through the Void, singing its songs anew with so much vigor after losing the burden of its own weight and the saws of the butchers. The Outsider smiles, knowing that a woman of his own blood had taught Daud to be in awe of the great sea creatures. 

~

After killing an Empress and saving her daughter, Daud gets spared by another favorite. Four in one city, it's quite unusual. No wonder they fought each other to the blood.  
Corvo still carries goodness in his heart, even after the murder of his love, two betrayals and the kidnapping of his daughter. He bests Daud, listens to his plea, and grants it. Nobody is more surprised than Daud himself. 

“And here I thought my story was coming to an end,” he says quietly, contemplatively, standing in the Void looking out over the broken up remains of Rudshore. It will be the last time he sees it. 

“For a man who wants to die you made quite the case for yourself,” the Outsider mocks. Daud gives him a look.

“Who says I want to die?”

“You let the only man who could best you live, and commanded your men to stay out of his way. You waited like a convict for your judge, jury and executioner. It was very poetic.”

“And he found me worthy of mercy.” Daud sounds a little awed, a little lost. The fire of the past has burned down, and while there is no such thing as peace in Daud’s near future, all unrest will be coming from within. A hurting man looking to make his one last chance count, to make his redemption last. He doesn't interest the Outsider like he used to, but now that the story of the Knife had come to an end, he will keep an eye on the path Daud's new beginning will lead him on. 

~

Delilah takes from the Void what was freely given to him. She makes herself as close to a goddess as she can, ripping holes into the walls separating the something from the nothing. The Outsider is not in a state to stop her. His powers are, as shocking as it seems, dwindling. The Void hungers for a god, he knows. It is utter chaos, nothing and everything at the same time, two sides so glaringly opposite that its status quo is total war in perfect silence that grinds the world to sand between its fronts. It doesn't need a god, but it sure wants one, as much as eternity can want. A god to hold its focus, to be its center point, the eye of the hurricane. Being a deity makes the Outsider unbelievably powerful, but that power is drained by his duty. He doesn't age, but he weakens. That is why he had to be changed from mortal to god, why there was an open position to fill. That is why he stands back and impassively watches Delilah use the Void so violently. History has a way of repeating itself, even after four thousand years. 

Emily is her father's daughter, at the brink of utter chaos like Corvo was fifteen years earlier. Interesting, like Corvo was. It runs in the family. She accepts his mark and makes her mother proud, bringing Delilah down without losing her good heart. 

That doesn't change that the deal is sealed, the world will end. The Outsider feels his time slowly thawing, ready to start ticking again. How will mortality feel after an eternity of godhood? He is looking forward to finding out.  
But in order to get there, he needs a sword bearer, or else he will only be consumed and ceases to exist. He chooses the third generation in a family that has been so dreadfully interesting, even if she isn't of the same blood. Billie Lurk finds her father again, who reveals to her what the Outsider revealed to him. 

“I have one last contract for you, old friend.”

Daud had shaken his head, standing in the middle of his vineyard broken into many floating islands. He hasn't been in the Void since the night after Corvo spared him. Going by his expression, he didn't miss it. Even though his hair is white, he still stands tall with arms crossed over his chest, grey eyes as piercing as ever. His mother’s eyes. 

“I haven't done this in 16 years, I'm not starting again for you of all people.” 

“Not even if the world will end otherwise? Delilah has done more damage than you know.” 

Daud had sighed, “Please tell me she didn't break out a second time. Because I'm definitely too old for witch hunting.” 

“Delilah was dealt with efficiently. She doesn't know she is imprisoned this time around,” the Outsider clarifies, and Daud makes an impatient hand gesture. Through the years of labor on his very own vineyard, he clearly hadn't lost his temper or his insolence. They had a healing effect on his psyche, though, it seems.

“Who then?” he asked, and the Outsider had told him. 

~ 

Billie's anger, cultivated over many years and always on the brink of boiling over, has cooled with regrets and good deeds. She is different from before, but still jaded. Through all of it, and this is the essential part, she still stands strong, ready to fight.

~

Billie's and Daud's meeting is less awkward than most of the few Whalers that had followed their master into retirement had expected. The two of them fall into their old work pattern. Billie goes on missions, Daud manages the intel. They make their apologies to each other in the only way they know. Stuntedly, and through letters and diary entries. Billie still calls him old man, this time it's completely true. Daud tells her he is proud of her to her face, which is also true and always has been. 

~

Billie finds the twin-bladed knife. As she takes it back from him, changed just like her hand, the Outsider knows that his story is nearly over. 

“The world is in your hands now.” 

“That's what Daud said,” she says, balancing the knife in a grip that must have been instinctive by now. She isn't certain of the situation, but she holds herself like an assassin. It is surprisingly frightening, the Outsider notices. Mortality, he thinks, and wants to smile. 

Instead, he says,“Daud doesn't know everything,” which makes Billie frown. 

“What does that mean?” she demands, and he tells her.

~

The boy blinks awake, and immediately regrets it when crisp white light blinds him. It takes a moment to adjust, and only when he can sit up and blearily look around himself, he notices the other person in the room. 

There's a man in a chair next to the door. He leans back and watches the boy sitting in the bed impassively. The scar dissecting his face is a tad scary, but his hair is white and he looks tired. He’s eerily familiar. 

“Daud,” the boy says, unsure where that name came from. The man nods. 

“So you remember?” His voice, deep and rough, is just as familiar as his face. 

“I'm… not sure,” the boy answers carefully, because there is a jumble in his head that makes sense to someone who's dead, but not to him. He has the daunting feeling that Daud might not be friendly. 

“Billie said you may not be,” Daud speaks again. He still hasn't moved. 

“I know Billie,” the boy says eagerly, because finally a clear, sharp picture manifests in his mind. A woman with a knife in her blackened hand and a ruby in her eye. 

Daud doesn't speak, so the boy continues, “Yes! Yes, I- I've given her something. A choice, I-”

“No,” Daud cuts him off, and now he looks angry, which is a truly terrifying look on that face. The boy wonders why he isn't more scared. 

“You really didn't. The world or your place isn't a choice.” 

There is a heavy pause, the air hot in the small room. Then the boy says, “I think… I think I lied to you and told her the truth. She had more of a choice than me, and less than some. It was necessary. I think I don't regret it.”

“I know,” Daud says tersely. “She told me most of it when she brought you here before returning to the Void.”

“It hungers for a god,” the boy echoes, though he's not sure whom. 

“Not right now. Not for a long while,” Daud says. He sounds sad. “The world is saved. You’re lucky.” 

“So I will die?” he can't help but blurt out. 

“Yes, eventually. Welcome to the club.”

Daud gets up, turns to leave. He's halfway through the door when the boy nearly falls out of bed in his hurry to catch up with him.

“Daud!” he nearly screams. Neither Daud's anger nor the thought of mortality had scared him as bad as the thought of being left alone. He doesn't know this room, doesn't know what lies beyond. It's an utterly unfamiliar feeling. He's not used to those.

He looks up to find Daud hovering over him fully back inside the room, his hands lifted in an aborted grab. The boy feels childish when he says, “Where are you going?”

“To work. The vineyard doesn't keep itself,” Daud answers like he's talking to an idiot. 

“Where will _I_ go?” the boy asks. Daud huffs. 

“You're not the first Void damned orphan I took in. Billie left you with me for a reason, the brat.” He musters the boy, then adds,” You better earn your keep, boy. I have a high standard for my wine.”

And just like that a big chunk of memory slots back into focus. No details, for there are too many, but he remembers just _who_ he is, mortality be damned. 

“I'm not a boy. I haven't been in four thousand years,” the Outsider snears. Daud raises an eyebrow. 

“What’s your name, then?” he asks, and the Outsider shrugs. 

“Well, then figure something out. I'm not calling you the Outsider any longer. That position belongs to somebody else now.” 

The Outsider, the boy, the human being he has just become nods his assent and lies back down. He lets Daud leave this time, and decides to ask him if they are close to the sea when he next returns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, my deary. I hope you liked it <3


End file.
